The Monstrefact: Ice Cream Mutants of Marvel Comics

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the ice cream mutants of Marvel Comics.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamman. This is the Monster Fact,
a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind
focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time. In
considering superpowered comic book characters, we all love to wonder
what it might be like to fly through the air,

(00:31):
to shoot laser beams from our eyeballs, or turn invisible.
Which superpower would we prefer? What does our choice say
about us as people? How might we change our own
lives if not the world, if we had these powers.
We also love to ponder the curse slash blessing dynamics

(00:51):
of certain superhero abilities, such as the power draining touch
of X Men's rogue in many other examples where great
power is achieved but something else is lost. However, we
also can help but ponder some of the more useless
seeming superpowers out there, and two of the best examples

(01:12):
from Marvel Comics concerned the power of ice cream. First,
there is ice cream that's spelled like eye scream. This
character was created by Alan Cooperberg in nineteen eighty three
as a mutant antagonist of the X Men. His superpower
the ability to transform his body himself into any flavor

(01:36):
of ice cream. He's a clear cut comedic villain, to
be sure, as his signature power does him little to
no good in his vendetta against the X Men, and
then they're soft Serve. Created by Bob Quinn in twenty
twenty one, she's a mutant citizen of the island of
Krakoa with the power to poop or otherwise excrete any

(01:58):
flavor of ice cream. She's essentially a background character with
obvious comedic intent, reminding us that not every mutant ability
is useful, desired, or certainly Omega level. One character transmutes
their own body into a sweet, frozen dairy treat, while
the other excretes it, either as a byproduct of digestion

(02:20):
or as some other sort of more mystical or extra
dimensional process. In either case, it does really feel almost alchemical,
doesn't it. While not as valuable as gold, ice cream
is certainly novel and almost otherworldly. It's clearly a food,
but doesn't really feel like a food, does it. It's

(02:41):
like some sort of mystical manna or pure emotion that
has phase shifted into a frozen treat that we can
eat again. Both of these characters were clearly created with
comedy in the forefront, but they somehow both feel on
the very cusp of profundity and honestly have trouble working

(03:02):
out exactly why. I think on one level, I am
reminded of the line from poet Wallace Stevens, the only
Emperor is the Emperor of ice cream, invoked in a
poem of sinister cold sweets dished out at a funeral
or awake. So maybe it's this poetic connection that stirs
these feelings when I'm considering ice cream and soft surf.

(03:25):
Wallace dances lyrically with the idea of sweet treats and death,
while these characters are a dance between surreal comedy and
body heart and the hyper desirable properties of ice cream
itself somehow confuses everything. Again, I'm not exactly sure what
to make of it, but I'd love to hear what

(03:46):
you have to say, what your insight is on ice
cream based superpowers, and hey, maybe there are some other
ice cream based superheroes out there within the Marvel universe
or in some of the other comic universes that you
can share with me. Tune in for additional episodes of
The Monster Fact, The Artifact, or Animalius to Pendium each week.
As always, you can email us at conduct at stuff

(04:09):
to Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
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